Twitter Suspended My Account And I Didn’t Die

Last Friday I got my phone out and went to tweet something witty when I saw this:

Say WHAAAAAAAAT??!!

So, of course I immediately went to Twitter.com, just like it told me to, and read everything about the rules to see if I had broken any. I hadn’t. I filled out an “appeal form,” basically saying, “Hi, I have no idea why my account was suspended. Please tell me why and restore it ASAP. Thanks.”

Then I took to Twitter on my other account and started a campaign:

In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have accused them of being handists.

And then…I waited.

It was frustrating because I had no idea why it was suspended and, honestly, it was kind of embarrassing. If you clicked on my Twitter handle, this is what you saw:

Yeesh.

It might as well just say, “This person is an evil, horrible person in whom you should have no interest, so WE SUSPENDED HIM.” Mostly, though, it was just the not knowing why. After nearly a week, I finally received an email from Twitter saying:

Oh, cuhl. Thanks.

Just as I suspected, it was a big mistake. An annoying mistake, but at least it was fixed.

And here’s the thing…I didn’t die.

It was annoying and frustrating and I was a little scared at first because there was no communication, but after that…life went on. Without @LivingOneHanded.

We have so much invested in social media these days, and I think that’s great, but we also need to be prepared for if it just went away. I don’t WANT it to, but this experience helped me to see that it’s not the end of the world without it.

In fact, part of me wanted those “following/followers” numbers to stay at zero. A clean slate. Start from scratch.